Peradventure

I am so amazed at how my favorite bloggers manage to post something almost everyday while preparing and teaching wonderful lessons to their classes everyday or traveling around the world presenting at conferences.  I traveled for portions of the past two weeks and I can barely keep up with my e-mail and my lesson plans. 

Last week I spent three days working with an wonderful group of teachers, professors, consultants and supervisors talking about elementary mathematics.  Our state has a new curriculum for the coming year and various groups are digging through the objectives and trying to make them crystal clear for every teacher in the state.  It is amazing how much language is involved in mathematics.  We argued (productively) about pattern units and pattern structure and core structure.  We tangled with functions and sequences.  Our own learning styles sometimes clashed with lists and pictures vs. well written paragraphs.  Although everyone in the room was somewhat of an expert in elementary mathematics, each one of us learned more about our favorite subject.  I wish all teachers had such opportunities for learning!  And I hope I will learn sometime to be a superblogger! 

I just returned from the American Montessori  Society Conference in Washington, D.C..  I traveled with another teacher from my school.  On the way we stopped by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and saw a marvelous new exhibition of butterflies.  Betsy Coe, Mariam Wright Edelman, Jane Goodall, and Art Costa were some of the keynote speakers.  I was particularly interested in Art Costa’s presentation and in a smaller follow up workshop where he emphasized metacognition and how we as educators have to change our mindset.  We practiced asking questions to stimulate our students’ thinking.  As a Montessorian teaching in a public school, it is often difficult to find support and I had the opportunity at this conference to network with others in a session led by Dennis Shapiro, the editor of The Public Montessorian.  We all agreed that Montessorians need to have a more powerful voice in how children are treated in our education system. I’m looking forward to being a part of this network. My friend and I wrapped up our trip by walking to the National Zoo where we specifically sought out the Giant Pandas.  For most of our short trip we dined at Open City which allowed us to eat delicious food for a reasonable cost in such a big city! Today I am back at school hoping to follow up and use some of the information gained on this trip!

This is my very first post.  I constantly devour the blogs of other educators and have wondered if I could have one of my own.  I have never liked writing very much.  But I love thinking and I am extremely curious about so many new tricks and tools in technology.  Although I read more blogs about technology in education than anything else, I probably won’t write about technology because I am just getting my feet wet.  My passions in education are more about community, respect, peace, gifted education, mathematics, critical thinking, adult learners and the Montessori way of learning.  I’m jumping in!  I hope I’ll learn new things, meet new people, and maybe become a better writer in the process.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.